Washington, D.C. (June 11, 2018)— In response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute, Reps. Elijah E. Cummings (D-MD), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Robert A. Brady (D-PA), Ranking Member of the Committee on House Administration, Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Ranking Member of the House Committee on the Judiciary, and John Sarbanes (D-MD), Chair of the Democracy Reform Task Force, released the following statement:
Today’s Supreme Court decision in Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute threatens the right to vote for millions of Americans. The decision wrongly interprets the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and disregards Congress’s intent in passing this law – to make voter registration easier, to increase participation in elections, and to end the harmful practice of state voter roll purges that targeted voters of color.
Justice Sotomayor put it best in her powerful dissent, writing that the majority’s decision “entirely ignores the history of voter suppression against which the NVRA was enacted and upholds a program that appears to further the very disenfranchisement of minority and low-income voters that Congress set out to eradicate.”
At a time when the President makes repeated unsubstantiated claims about widespread voter fraud and his Administration works to disenfranchise voters of color by adding a dangerous citizenship question to the 2020 Census, today’s decision should serve as a wake-up call to all Americans that the right to vote remains fragile and under threat.
Congress must take action and pass legislation to bolster voting rights, including strengthening the Voting Rights Act, enacting nationwide automatic voter registration, and expanding early and absentee voting. We must protect this foundational right of our democracy.
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